Summer is upon us which means it’s time for bathing suit shopping. I did mine early so I thought I’d share some of my acquired wisdom. Many of these tips are applicable to men as well as women except for those involving boobs. My tip to any man who has “moobs” is to keep his shirt on. Or maybe buy a really binding rash guard. Then you might get away with looking like a really cool, old surfer dude.

To make your experience more pleasurable grab your funniest friend and go to lunch first. Have a couple of drinks but not too many because pulling bathing suits on and off can be a real bitch. It requires a certain amount of strength, balance and coordination. (This alone is reason enough to go to the gym every spring.)

Be prepared not to take yourselves too seriously. Summers fly by way too fast to waste them fretting over a bathing suit

Keep in mind the new, energy-efficient lighting used in stores these days will mask the true color of the merchandise and makes everyone’s pallor look like they are about to puke. Swimwear is going to expose a lot of jaundiced looking skin. And that black (slimming but too fucking hot) suit you are going for may actually be a really gaudy shade of purple.

Men generally just put on something that looks like baggy boxer shorts and wonder what the big deal is. But men’s suits are getting much shorter and snugger and your legs and butt don’t look that great anymore either. And if you are unhappy about shorter and tighter (and I can attest to hearing male grumblings in the stores ) just go try on a speedo and check out your yellow tinted gut and sagging parts in the mirror and you will humbly have a better understanding of what women suffer.

Women’s bathing suits are now styled to hide a figure flaw. But just one. Any woman who has only one figure flaw still probably wears a bikini. The rest of us have to choose what we want to most hide. This may be a good time for another drink.

Once you have branded yourself with your worst flaw and taken your choices to a window to see what color they really are you are ready for the dressing room. Don’t let your friend get too far away. Women will not want to come out of the dressing room. They don’t want to be seen. Men on the other hand, will not want to go in. They don’t want to try anything on. But I am fucking tired of you don’t want to have to make returns.

Merchants don’t put three-way mirrors in their stores anymore. This is where you need an honest friend to tell you how your ass looks because you won’t be able to see it. This really pisses me off. Just watch people walking around these days and you can tell no one knows what they look like from behind. If they did they would pass on a lot of the shit they buy. Stores have figured this out.

If you have a camel toe (women) or we can tell which side you “dress”on (men) go get a bigger size. I don’t care what size you think you are or want to be or were last year. Get a bigger size! Size really doesn’t matter here.

And please girlfriends…there is a good chance your high beams are going to go on if you get in the water so make sure when you stuff them into your suit they are pointing north. This will instantly make you look younger.

Lastly, to save yourself from potential humiliation make sure you get your suit wet and take a look at yourself in good light before you go swimming in it. (Thank God I was out of town and didn’t know anyone. I don’t even want to think what I looked like walking away. I did remind myself though that my stomach only exhibited a ripple effect because I was blessed with three children and my boobs were, if nothing else, still mine and still healthy. Or perhaps I just shopped for the wrong figure flaw?)

So good luck and happy shopping! I hope you enjoy some great summer days by the water proudly wearing your new, well-selected suit hiding underneath your favorite cover-up.

I never won the mother of the year award. I came close once. Of course the kids had all left home by then for distant corners of the earth and I don’t think I actually saw any of them that year so maybe it wouldn’t have counted anyway.

Not that I didn’t try to be a perfect mother. It was just so hard. The kids Things always got in the way of my best efforts. I’d dress them in a crisp clean outfit for the first day of school and they would splash in the mud on the way to the bus stop. I’d get them a nice haircut and then have to cut big hunks out where they got their gum stuck. I’d take off their training wheels in the morning and then take them for stitches by lunch.

Double double. My toil and trouble.

I never seemed to make the right decisions. If they said they were sick and I let them stay home from school they would be running around the house 30 minutes after the bell sounded. If I said they were fine and made them go to school they would be puking 30 minutes after they got there. I’d let them cry it out in the crib like they told us to. Only I went in after nap time once to find a baby with his foot stuck in the rails of the crib. What if it had been his head? I thought they were lying when they were telling the truth and telling the truth when they were lying. It seems like I was saying “I’m sorry” more than they were.

I’d try to be super organized but often got mixed up and somehow always seemed to forget it was picture day. And I really hate to think about what might have happened the day nobody picked up baby girl from soccer practice.

And I didn’t have a glue gun to “help” with school projects. Remember those mothers? God I hated them.

My disciplinary approach was all over the place. Some got spanked. Some didn’t. Two of them love to remind me of how I chased them up the stairs waving a wooden spoon in the air. Some got their temper tantrums ignored. Some got put in time out but one in particular refused to stay there and damned if I was going to stay in there with him. They all got grounded. And I yelled. A lot. I figured it was all right to yell “I’M NOT TELLING YOU AGAIN TO CLEAN YOUR ROOM.” I was just proud of myself for not yelling what was really running through my head which was more like, “YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT! GO CLEAN YOUR FUCKING ROOM! IF YOU CAN’T EVEN PICK YOUR FUCKING CRAP UP HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO EVER HOLD A JOB? DO YOU THINK I AM GOING TO SUPPORT YOUR LAZY ASS YOUR WHOLE LIFE?” So I still hold to only yelling “clean your room” was really good.

In my defense mine weren’t the easiest of kids. They cut down a tree in the woods which hit a power line and knocked the power out in half of Chesterfield County. They built a haunted house in the playroom and passed out flyers to the whole middle school but neglected to tell me about the invites. The oldest two smashed up and broke everything we cherished so by the third one there was nothing left in the house to break. She made up for it with cars

Beautiful bad ass baby girl.

My kids didn’t grow up getting a blue ribbon for everything. And they certainly didn’t grow up with a blue ribbon mother. Maybe this “everybody gets a blue ribbon” thing is really to make the mothers feel better. It’s a tough job. Always has been, always will be. Each generation of mothers faces unique challenges.

Yet somehow, despite my children lacking a perfect mother they managed to grow up to be three outstanding adults. (Maybe it’s because I wasn’t perfect.) I love them so. Mothers Day means something very different to me today. My own mother has been dead for 20 years and my children are long gone from my household. So it’s no longer a Hallmark Day. It is about celebrating that I had the privilege to be a mother. So even if I never won a mother of the year award I am so grateful I got a green participation ribbon. Best contest I ever entered.